1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an application management technology installed into an image processing device such as a copying machine.
2. Description of the Related Art
Up to now, copying machines have been proposed where additional applications are installed in the copying machines after product delivery and the installed applications are started, stopped, or uninstalled. For example, in a copying machine proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-287990, applications on the copying machine can be managed through a web browser on a PC. With such a copying machine, various applications can be developed and added in at a later time. It is therefore possible to incorporate the copying machine in an existing system, or to adopt the copying machine to a new system in a flexible manner.
In addition, a technology for restricting concurrent execution of applications in view of resources that the applications use, or in view of a dependency relation of the applications, or the like has been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-333926 proposes a method of setting identification information for other applications whose program concurrent execution should be restricted and setting restriction conditions for each application. Then, during the execution of one selected application, the execution of set other applications is restricted under the restriction conditions until the one selected application execution is finished. Alternatively, depending on the execution status of the application, the execution of an application that is not desired to be concurrently executed on a UI is restricted.
However, when the concurrent execution of applications is restricted in the above-mentioned copying machine, the following problem occurs. According to a technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-333926,it is necessary to previously set restrict conditions for each application, and therefore those conditions need to be reset each time an applications that is not desired to be concurrently executed is newly released. For this reason, there is a problem in that the setting operation is a burden for users, thereby causing inconvenience.
In addition, there is encountered a problem in that it is impossible to concurrently execute the applications after the users are made to recognize a risk of concurrently executing such applications. To cope with the problem, it is conceivable to provide an application management system where application concurrent execution can be restricted without previously setting restriction conditions for each application on an image processing device side by embedding concurrent start restriction information in the application itself. However, there is also a problem in that it is difficult to adapt to a case where the concurrent execution restriction is not desired depending on a version or type of devices on which the application is operated, or the like.